End-of-Year Lists to Celebrate and Reflect

It's good for us all to take time to reflect on our own growth. We forget in the day to day, or don't realize, how far we've come. For kids especially, just in the space of a year their growth is usually pretty dramatic. It's nice to help them see this growth over time and celebrate it. 

For the last several years, at the end of the school year, I have made each of my kids a card-- "Congratulations on finishing third grade!" it might say on the front. Inside of it, my husband and I have listed some of their many accomplishments of the past year. I think they always felt special reading these cards (or having them read to them). The card tradition makes a nice keepsake and helps give a little extra pomp and circumstance to reaching that all-important last day of school/eve of summer vacation. 

I looked back over the kids' cards from past years (going back as far as 2015, the year my oldest finished preschool) and smiled at some of the things we'd recorded as important milestones each year:

• You were brave enough this year to run through the sprinkler! (Preschool, M)
• You are so good at using scissors and placing stickers. (Preschool, M)
• You learned to put on your own coat and button and zip your clothes! (Preschool, W)
• You learned to make "7" stars. (Kindergarten, W)
• You always keep us updated on how many days you have been in school this year. (Kindergarten, W)
• You learned two whole new sports-- basketball and tennis. (1st Grade, W)
• You did a great job with all your jobs as a ringbearer. (1st Grade, W)
• You started to enjoy Sudoku puzzles. (2nd Grade, W)
• You taught us cool facts about Jamestown. (3rd Grade, W)

This year I realized it might be fun to have my kids each make their own list for the first time. We did it as a little reflection project on our last "official" day of school recently, although this could be done at any time that it feels right to step back and recognize growth-- at the end of a summer, end of the actual calendar year, before each birthday... 

This is how I framed it for them: I asked them to sit down for a few minutes and list things they had learned this year or things they were proud of accomplishing. I told them to think about "school" stuff like reading, writing, math, science, social studies, etc., but also to think about music, sports, friends, life. They both were really engaged in it, my oldest especially. (I told him after we had finished, that just watching him work on this was an example of his growth; I remember a time when he would not have been able to sit for 20 minutes and fill up two pages easily, without any trouble getting started or complaints of being stuck.) Here are a few gems they each recognized about the past year (all is word-for-word from what they wrote, except my notes in brackets): 

M (age 6):

• I learned my 4th finger and my new bow hold [on violin]. 
• I skied 5 miles and rode my bike 5 miles and hiked 5 miles! [At different times :) ]
• I learned to tie my shoes. 
• I learned to snap [fingers]. 

W (age 10):

• I do a bunch of push-ups every day.
• I built a bunch of cool Lego forts. 
• I started doing the dishwasher every day (not that I'm proud of it).
• I got better (way, way better) at solving problems with M.
• I made several videos on YouTube.
• I got even more competent at glade skiing with my twin tips. 
• I realized that Hamilton is super awesome. 
• I learned a bunch of complicated new words and used them in my writing. 
• I made new friends on my baseball team. 

W said something after we made the lists like, "Wow, I knew I did a lot this year but this list makes me feel really good." Having that hit them was of course exactly the point.

We parents couldn't resist separately noting some things we're proud of too, and didn't want to break our tradition of documenting them in a card. Here are some of this year's accomplishments we came up with for each of the kids as well:

For W:

• You learned to do long division, averages, percentages, and more. 
• You crushed your first 22-mile bike ride.
• You started eating salad-- yay iceberg! 
• You began studying Greek and made us some delicious Greek food.
• You discovered the joys of Calvin and Hobbes. 
• You learned to do video editing and have used it to make several cool projects. 
• You have maintained two penpals. 

For M:

• You learned to ride your bike!
• You learned to READ and you read everything. 
• You memorized lots of Frozen and Moana songs and you sing them beautifully. 
• You learned sign language.
• You were on your first soccer and baseball teams and you learned a lot of skills. 
• You learned to downhill ski and you went on the chairlift for the first time. 
• You grew 3 1/2 inches and needed a bigger violin. 
• You love science and always want to do more science. 
• You can do addition and subtraction. 
• You became a writer and wrote lots of great stories about babies.
• You pour your own milk in your cereal.
• You are a huge help in the kitchen.

We read all these lists-- theirs about themselves, and ours we wrote for them-- aloud at dinner and there were a lot of smiles and nods all around. It was a fun end-of-year or anytime reflection project-- good for self esteem and for developing a growth mindset and just plain fun.